


Impressions

by vtn



Category: The Network (Band)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-27
Updated: 2006-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 17:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilhelm Fink doesn't believe in much, but he does believe Dr. Viktor Svengali could be someone worth meeting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impressions

Let’s say hypothetically I make a list of things I hate. Really, truly despise. Detest. Abhor. Scorn. Spurn. Anathematize.

I’m going to tell you, right off the bat: this is not a short list. I’ll also tell you this: if you’re one of those sorts of people who thinks that there are methods of spending one’s time that are much more beneficial to one’s mental health than making a list of things one hates, you’re on it. Right here. Item number fifty-four: ‘people who think there are methods of spending one’s time that are much more beneficial to one’s mental health than making a list of things one hates’. Don’t be shy. Raise your hand. 

Let’s say hypothetically I put these things in no particular rank order, except that I designate the top of the list for the things I have a most caustic, virulent, plaguing hatred for. 

And hypothetically you’re holding this list in your hands, looking at me across the table that I’m hypothetically sitting at in my hypothetical chair. Among the very first items you’ll see—far from ‘signs asking for tips at bars’ and ‘pulling hair out of polar-fleece blankets’ and much closer to ‘people who think religion opposes progress’ and ‘venereal disease’—is ‘waiting in line’.

Did I make that clear? I really, truly hate, despise, detest, abhor, scorn, spurn, and anathematize waiting in line. It’s the sort of thing that drives me to such boredom that I start looking for synonyms for ‘hate’ in my student thesaurus. I already know just about every word in there, anyway. The faster I get out of here, the better.

 

I’m waiting in line.

I’m waiting in line to meet a person who I fully expect to end up somewhere in the middle of my list, near ‘Neapolitan ice cream’ and ‘the smell of wet leaves’. That is, unless he confirms my suspicions that he’s going to be one of those religious nut types, in which case he’ll be near the top of my list. Unfortunately, through a long chain of events, I’m in a situation where I simply have to meet him. It’s a long story. I won’t bother to explain.

 

Except maybe I will, because after all I’m standing in line with not a thing to do and that’s exactly the sort of time when I’ll recount long stories in my head simply for want of something to do. 

Let me get this straight: I don’t believe in _jack shit_. I don’t believe in divine intervention. I don’t even believe in divinity, and I don’t believe that priests and nuns and holy people are anything but druggie pedophile masturbators. I don’t believe conspiracy theorists, except when they’re obviously right and everyone else is the ones imagining conspiracies. 

So when something strikes _me_ as weird, you better know something’s up. I believe in Wilhelm Fink And His Uncanny Sense Of Intuition, and said uncanny sense is telling me that it’s extremely fucked up when you and somebody else do something like, say, sending an email to someone and that evening finding out that: a, you typed in his address wrong and it bounced back; b, you have an email from him containing almost the exact same sentence as one you wrote in your email.

We both singled each other out from a group—he thought I was more interested and creative than the students in my department, and I thought he was more engaging and well-spoken than anyone I’d heard talk about nuclear physics as of yet. (I don’t even really think it’s all that great a subject, myself, but at least it’s significantly less boring and significantly more controversial than most of the stuff they teach in this hellhole. No, not MIT; not specifically. I’m talking about America.) 

Where was I? We both wrote in our emails about how the other was ‘clearly exceptional’ and how we ought to meet privately at some point and have a further correspondence, seeing as we could both potentially be of help to each other. ‘We seem to be,’ we both wrote, ‘of a single mind.’

If I were anyone other than Wilhelm Fink, it would have scared the living piss out of me. On the contrary, I sent him an email, this time to the _right_ address, and we arranged a meeting. Single mind or no, he could be…useful.

 

“Hey _asshole_ , the line’s moving,” I mutter, jabbing the guy in front of me with an elbow and trying to make it look like an accident. He looks all surprised, then looks kind of like he might feel sorry for me, before walking forward.

 

This gets me to why I’m all of a sudden hearing alarm bells in my head telling me that my feelings toward this guy are probably going to take a plunge into the infernal: I’m meeting him at his, hah, _other_ place of work. He’s got a little side operation, when he isn’t teaching nuclear physics, see. All these motherfuckers in front of me are here to see him, cash burning in their pockets, looking for a way to relax.

Relax.  _Relax?_  I can’t understand it. This man is a scientific genius. He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be dealing with these scumbag characters, shouldn’t be dabbling (or more than dabbling) in a profession that’s always been associated with street life and carnies and drug money. 

No, he’s not a prostitute. I’d probably like him better if he was, since prostitution is the one industry where a guy knows he’s gonna get the shit kicked out of him but he does it anyway. And plus, he’s good looking. I’d fuck him. I’d fuck him and I’d probably even get a goddamned discount.

Of course, on the other hand, ‘hypnotic therapists’ don’t do drugs or get AIDS.

I fucking hate AIDS.

Drugs, well, I don’t give a shit except when people get AIDS using them. If we just quarantined all the damn AIDS in the world, we’d have solved about half our problems, but instead people go around fucking on drugs and getting AIDS all over the place.

So yeah, the guy’s a hypnotist. Excuse me if I crack up laughing over here. Nuclear physicist-cum-hypnotist. He believes in the world’s most fucking controversial science since Copernicus told the Catholic Church where they could shove the ‘everything revolves around the Earth’ theory, and yet he also believes, or tries to make other people believe, that he can influence them by swinging a little shiny disk around.

I want to vomit.

I’m contenting myself with being angry enough _to_ vomit. But meeting the motherfucker anyway. 

 

The line moves up.

I fucking hate lines.

 

I’m standing at his table after a while, drumming my fingers on the red cloth while I wait for him to come out from behind the curtain.  _Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain_. Alice in Wonderland? Nope, Wizard of Oz. Whatever, same damn movie; same damn message anyway. ‘There might be fun shit to do when you’re away from home, but you’ve got to come back eventually because, be realistic, life is really about the boring shit.’ Alice in Wonderland just had more drugs. And Lewis Carroll was a pedophile.

And there he is. My heart skips a beat. No particular reason; just when you’ve been waiting for something forever, part of you doesn’t want to believe it’s happening. That kind of thing.

He’s dressed in all black except with a hint of red on the underside of his silk vest. What a fag. I mean, hell, I’m a fag at least half the time, so no one had better get pissed at me calling him that. He’s got a fucking pocket watch. I don’t need any ‘gaydar’ to tell that this guy likes the cock.

“Wilhelm Fink.”

Oh, so he remembers me.

“Hypnotism is bullshit,” I say softly.

“Come inside,” he says. Challenging me. Or maybe I’m just imagining it.

I push aside the red curtain and head inside to a tiny, dark room with a candle on a table. I sit down, elbows on the table, and lean back in my chair. He enters and seats himself at the chair across. We wait until our eyes adjust.

“Doctor Svengali. Your name is just perfect for this profession, don’t you think?”

“More than you would expect, Wilhelm. The Art has been handed down in my family over centuries.”

“I have a question,” I ask, smirking. “How does your family explain those few people who just _can’t be hypnotized_?”

“There’s no one who can’t be hypnotized, Wilhelm. It is much more difficult for nonbelievers such as yourself, but certainly not impossible. But that doesn’t matter. That isn’t why you’re here.”

“No. I’m here because I think…” 

And then I see something beyond that candle flame, something in his eyes or in the shadows on his face, and I experience a minor paradigm shift. I clear my throat.

“I’m here because I think perhaps we ought to try combining our efforts. A partnership of sorts…could be very beneficial to both of us.” I expected a sudden wave of nervousness to wash over me, or at least the vague feeling that about ten years ago this would have made me nervous as all fuck. But no. I just grin. 

“Do you think so?” He smiles wryly. “I have the distinct feeling you may just be exactly who I’m looking for.”

“I wasn’t aware you were looking for someone.”

“Of course I am. I always am.” He doesn’t say anything more. There are a lot of questions I feel like asking him right now. They include ‘do you mind if I think of you when I jerk off?’, ‘what the hell kind of nuclear physicist does hypnotism?’, ‘have you noticed I have a knife in my pocket?’ and, oddly, ‘do you hate Neapolitan ice cream as much as I do?’ I don’t actually ask them, though.

“Doctor, would you like to continue this conversation elsewhere?”

“Certainly. I believe we could get dinner at the restaurant down the street. I’ve always been fond of French.”

“DeMarco’s, you mean? Doctor, I can’t afford—”

“Nonsense. I’ll take care of the bill. I have a project you may be interested in, and I believe a bit of money here or there may be worth the effort in swinging you over to my side.”

“Doctor, I don’t understand. Wasn’t _I_ the one who suggested a partnership?” I laugh. “I really doubt you’ll be needing to spend money on me like that, though I’m flattered by the offer.”

“No. I need it.” He stands, brushes his coat off. “Fink, is it? A proud German name. I grew up near Cologne, myself.”

“I’m from Hamburg. But I’ve been to Cologne. I like the atmosphere.” I smile and nod, realizing how long it’s been since I talked about _liking_ something. My infallible instinct must be telling me I really have to impress this guy. Not let on that I take comfort in my personal world of spite and malice. 

He inclines his head briefly, then opens the curtain.

“My business for the evening is done,” he says. “This young fellow,” and I know that’s my cue to come out, “Is my last client for today. A pleasure doing business with each of you.”

He’s god damned charming. He _will_ be good to have around.

We walk down the street, chatting idly about fusion reactions and the shape of the universe.

 

Let’s say hypothetically I make a list of the things I hate. Really, truly despise. Detest. Abhor. Scorn. Spurn. Anathematize.

Okay, cross off ‘anathematize’. The more I think about it, the more that word pisses me off. It’s going on the list, next to ‘the fact that prairie dogs aren’t dogs and naked mole rats aren’t moles or rats’. 

Let’s say hypothetically I make this list, and like I said it’s a long-ass list, right? And somewhere between the top of the list and the bottom of the list, which by definition I guess puts it in the middle of the list, is ‘mistaken impressions’.

 

I’m eating French bread and they have one of those little containers in the center of the table with olive oil with herbs in it or some shit. I hate those little containers because they’re too damn small, and also because if you put your bread in it then it gets little pieces of bread inside and they get stuck to the next thing someone puts in it. But I’m using the damn thing anyway, because great conversation makes me hungry, although I can’t decide whether it’s really bread I’m hungry for.

“Wilhelm,” he asks, “What are you interested in doing with your college career?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I say with a shrug and a scoff, which is my version of amiable. He catches my eye, leans forward.

“And do you think that perhaps you could in fact find room for a side project?”

“Only if it’s interesting.”

“What interests you?”

“Change. You?”

“Truth. What else?”

“Changing the truth?”

“Exactly.”

 

“Do you know, Doctor, that I was honestly on the verge of turning on my heels and deleting your email?”

“Perhaps that will teach you not to judge.” He takes a sip of his wine. I’m underage, of course, but I have a feeling I’m going to be drinking myself halfway into a coma tonight, because sometimes it’s the only way to be honest with myself.

“Perhaps. I must say, though, I doubt it.”

“Well, it’s possible you’re wary as opposed to judgmental. And that might be the correct way to go about it.” I smile.

“You can stop reading me like a book now.”

“I doubt I’ll ever know everything about you, Wilhelm Fink.”

 

Probably not, because he probably can’t read this. He probably could never guess that right now?

I want to believe in something.

And I’m not entirely sure I hate that.


End file.
